D.C. Current

Misreading the Lessons of Eric Cantor's Defeat

He ran a bad campaign, and his loss doesn't mean that the GOP will be controlled by the Tea Party.

Journos. God love us. We sometimes try to mask our ignorance with a smoke screen of hyperbole, which is why the smoke pouring from newspapers last week was thicker than the fog laid down over Palermo harbor by the Allies in World War II. A political unknown aptly named David Brat unexpectedly unseated Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a primary in Virginia's seventh congressional district. Conventionally minded political experts of the press never saw the Brat express coming. They were aghast and mystified by the unknown's decisive unsaddling of a GOP pooh-bah -- and subsequently they found themselves...